Why it's important to make sure things are translated correctly.
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.
When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." However, the company's mistakenly thought the spanish word "embarazar" meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that "It wont leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I Saw the Pope" in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the Potato."
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Lost in Translation
Posted by *Mandy* at 5:09 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
I had a really bad misunderstanding experience once. I was a guest speaker at the Hershey SDA church and as I was standing in the back with the youth class waiting for special music to be over, I found out that the kid playing the trumpet (he was giving his heart and soul to the music - had only been playing like a week I think - so you can imagine what it sounded like) was the son of the youth teacher, who was also there in the room. We were all talking about how he was trying, but making a lot of mistakes. I remarked "This is so horrible", meaning the way we were pointing out his mistakes and talking so much about it. Later I realized that the Mother took me to mean that his playing was horrible, because of her response. I would have corrected the error then and there, but I didn't catch it cus I was so nervous about speaking. I feel so bad, because the message I was preaching was all in vain for her if she thought I was uncaring and rude towards her son. I still feel bad about it and it happened like 3 years ago.
Post a Comment